Saturday at the Canal

Soto is a prominent voice in the Chicano literary movement and in Chicano poetry, which typically addresses themes of culture and identity, as well as discrimination and the validation of Chicano/a culture in the United States. This movement emerged in the 1950s with the work of poet Rodolfo Anaya, however with the 1970s being a critical moment for the work of ethnic minorities and women in the United States, the movement gained momentum just as Soto began to publish. His early life and family background influences his writing, having grown up in a working-class Mexican American family in the 1950s and 1960s in the San Joaquin Valley. After his father died when Soto was five, his family endured financial hardship, and Soto’s experience is often reflected in his poems and writing, where he depicts the realities of his upbringing in what he has referred to as a culture of poverty. Much of his work, including “Saturday at the Canal,” explores his sociocultural perspective, partly through the eyes of a child but also with the voice of an adult revisiting these pivotal moments playing with friends, observing his community, going to school, etc.